The Top of the World Part 32

"Whatever happens then, we are friends," she said. "Remember that always, won't you? It--it will hurt me very much if you don't."

"Bless your heart!" said Guy, and smiled a twisted smile. "You were always generous, weren't you? Too generous sometimes. What did you want to rake me out of my own particular little comer of h.e.l.l for? Was it a mistaken idea of kindness or merely curiosity?

I wasn't anyhow doing you any harm there."

His words, accompanied by that painful smile, went straight to her heart. "Ah, don't--don't!" she said. "Did you think I could forget you so easily, or be any thing but wretched while you were there?"

He looked at her again, this time intently, "What can you be made of, Sylvia?" he said. "Do you mean to say you found it easy to forgive me?"

She dashed the tears from her eyes. "I don't remember that I was ever--angry with you," she said. "Somehow I realized--from the very first--that--that--it was just--bad luck."

"You amaze me!" he said.

She smiled at him. "Do I? I don't quite see why. Is it so amazing that one should want to pa.s.s on and make the best of things? That is how I feel now. It seems so long ago, Guy,--like another existence almost. It is too far away to count."

"Are you talking of the old days?" he broke in, in a voice that grated. "Or of the time a few weeks ago when you got here to find yourself stranded?"

She made a little gesture of protest. "It wasn't for long. I don't want to think of it. But it might have been much worse.

Burke was--is still--so good to me."

"Is he?" said Guy. He was looking at her curiously, and instinctively she turned away, avoiding his eyes.

"Come and have some lunch!" she said. "He ought to be in directly."

"He is in," said Guy. "He went round to the stable."

It was another instance of Burke's goodness that he had not been present at their meeting. She turned to lead the way within with a warm feeling at her heart. It was solely due to this consideration of his that she had not suffered the most miserable embarra.s.sment.

Somehow she felt that she could not possibly have endured that first encounter in his presence. But now that it was over, now that she had made acquaintance with this new Guy--this stranger with Guy's face, Guy's voice, but not Guy's laugh or any of the sparkling vitality that had been his--she felt she wanted him. She needed his help. For surely now he knew Guy better than she did!

It was with relief that she heard his step, entering from the back of the house. He came in, whistling carelessly, and she glanced instinctively at Guy. That sound had always made her think of him.

Had he forgotten how to whistle also, she wondered?

She expected awkwardness, constraint; but Burke surprised her by his ease of manner. Above all, she noticed that he was by no means kind to Guy. He treated him with a curt friendliness from which all trace of patronage was wholly absent. His att.i.tude was rather that of brother than host, she reflected. And its effect upon Guy was of an oddly bracing nature. The semi-defiant air dropped from him. Though still subdued, his manner showed no embarra.s.sment. He even, as time pa.s.sed, became in a sardonic fashion almost jocose.

In company with Burke, he drank lager-beer, and he betrayed not the smallest desire to drink too much. Furtively she watched him throughout the meal, trying to adjust her impressions, trying to realize him as the lover to whom she had been faithful for so long, the lover who had written those always tender, though quite uncommunicative letters, the lover, who had cabled her his welcome, and then had so completely and so cruelly failed her.

Her ideas of him were a whirl of conflicting notions which utterly bewildered her. Of one thing only did she become very swiftly and surely convinced, and that was that in failing her he had saved her from a catastrophe which must have eclipsed her whole life.

Whatever he was, whatever her feelings for him, she recognized that this man was not the mate her girlish dreams had so fondly pictured. Probably she would have realized this in any case from the moment of their meeting, but circ.u.mstances might have compelled her to join her life to his. And then------

Her look pa.s.sed from him to Burke, and instinctively she breathed a sigh of thankfulness. He had saved her from much already, and his rock-like strength stood perpetually between her and evil. For the first time she was consciously glad that she had entrusted herself to him.

At the end of luncheon she realized with surprise that there had not been an awkward moment. They went out on to the _stoep_ to smoke cigarettes when it was over, and drink the coffee which she went to prepare. It was when she was coming out with this that she first heard Guy's cough--a most terrible, rending sound that filled her with dismay. Stepping out on to the _stoep_ with her tray, she saw him bent over the back of a chair, convulsed with coughing, and stood still in alarm. She had never before witnessed so painful a struggle. It was as if he fought some demon whose clutch threatened to strangle him.

Burke came to her and took the tray from her hands. "He'll be better directly," he said. "It was the cigarette."

With almost superhuman effort, Guy succeeded in forcing back the monster that seemed to be choking him, but for several minutes thereafter he hung over the chair with his face hidden, fighting for breath.

Burke motioned to Sylvia to sit down, but she would not. She stood by Guy's side, and at length as he grew calmer, laid a gentle hand upon his arm.

"Come and sit down, Guy. Would you like some water?"

He shook his head. "No--no! Give me--that d.a.m.ned cigarette!"

"Don't you be a fool!" said Burke, but he said it kindly. "Sit down and be quiet for a bit!"

He came up behind Guy, and took him by the shoulders. Sylvia saw with surprise the young man yield without demur, and suffer himself to be put into the chair where with an ashen face he lay for a s.p.a.ce as if afraid to move.

Burke drew her aside. "Don't be scared!" he said, "It's nothing new. He'll come round directly."

Guy came round, sat slowly up, and reached a shaking hand towards the table on which lay his scarcely lighted cigarette.

"Oh, don't!" Sylvia said quickly. "See, I have just brought out some coffee. Won't you have some?"

Burke settled the matter by picking up the cigarette and tossing it away.

Guy gave him a queer look from eyes that seemed to b.u.m like red coals, but he said nothing whatever. He took the coffee Sylvia held out to him and drank it as if parched with thirst.

Then he turned to her. "Sorry to have made such an exhibition of myself. It's all this infernal sand. Yes, I'll have some more, please. It does me good. Then I'll get back to my own den and have a sleep."

"You can sleep here," Burke said unexpectedly. "No one will disturb you. Sylvia never sits here in the afternoon."

Again Sylvia saw that strange look in Guy's eyes, a swift intent glance and then the instant falling of the lids.

"You're very--kind," said Guy. "But I think I'll get back to my own quarters all the same."

Impulsively Sylvia intervened. "Oh, Guy, please,--don't go back to that horrible little shanty on the sand! I got a room all ready for you yesterday--if you will only use it."

He turned to her. For a second his look was upon her also, and it seemed to her in that moment that she and Burke had united cruelly to bait some desperate animal. It sent such a shock through her that she shrank in spite of herself.

And then for the first time she heard Guy laugh, and it was a sound more dreadful than his cough had been, a catching, painful sound that was more like a cry--the hunger-cry of a prowling beast of the desert.

He got up as he uttered it, and stretched his arms above his head.

She saw that his hands were clenched.

"Oh, don't overdo it, I say!" he begged. "Hospitality is all very well, but it can be carried too far. Ask Burke if it can't!

Besides, two's company and three's the deuce. So I'll be going--and many thanks!"

He was gone with the words, s.n.a.t.c.hing his hat from a chair where he had thrown it, and departing into the glare of the desert with never a backward glance.

Sylvia turned swiftly to her husband, and found his eyes upon her.

"With a gasping cry she caught his arm. Oh, can't you go after him? Can't you bring him back?"

He freed the arm to put it round her, with the gesture of one who comforts a hurt child. "My dear, it's no good," he said. "Let him go!"

"But, Burke--" she cried. "Oh, Burke----"

"I know," he made answer, still soothing her. "But it can't be done--anyhow at present. You'll drive him away if you attempt it.

I know. I've done it. Leave him alone till the devil has gone out of him! He'll come back then--and be decent--for a time."